How to Increase Sales from Leads

By Joe Witte, Executive Vice President and Partner, Logo Design Guru

Are you seeing more traffic come to your website? Seeing more leads come through your email? But not seeing the results in your revenue?

Here are some tips to help you convert these leads to customers.

1)    Call/Email immediately- remember, if someone found you online, and took the time to phone/ fill out a lead form, chances are they did this with another company. Being the first company to contact that individual is critical. If you don’t reach them on the phone, follow up with an email that includes all of your contact information and the best time to reach you. Consistently stay in touch with these leads over the next 3 to 6 months.

2)     Have someone confident and knowledgeable call your prospects- your prospects may be the most important people you speak to today, because they could be your customers tomorrow. It’s an easy task to delegate, but ensure it’s delegated to someone who represents your company well, and is knowledgeable.

3)    Collect emails from lead forms- If someone filled out a lead form, and it includes their email address, collect that data and store it in an email marketing system such as www.iContact.com or www.ConstantContact.com.  Then you can send these interested parties a monthly newsletter or discounts.

4)    Rate your leads by opportunity- Not all leads are equal. If one person has expressed an immediate interest, and has a budget of $1000 for your widget, he is worth more than someone who says they are mildly interested and has a budget of $500. Help your sales team prioritize the leads and follow up accordingly.

5)    Provide monthly offers, discounts or coupons and update them regularly. Make them fun and interesting.

6)    Create urgency with your prospects, and give them a reason to buy NOW.

7)    Have a call to action on everything you send out… include “Call now”, “Email Us”, “Buy Now”… make it easy for people to find contact information and take action when they are ready.

8)    Have marketing materials professionally designs, and ready to send. Use metrics and visuals in your marketing materials. If you have to write proposals for your business, have a template that allows you to turn them around quickly.

9)    Ask your prospects/leads where they heard about you- and when you start to see a pattern, INVEST IN IT, OPTIMIZE, DO MORE.

10)    Optimize your advertising campaigns. Clearly communicate with your advertising partners what’s working, who your best customers are, and what’s not working. Good marketing requires optimization, testing, improvement, tracking and expanding on those results that work well.

Joe Witte is a partner at Logo Design Guru, and has successfully started 3 small businesses including CentricSource and Travel Ad Network.